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tv   Reliable Sources  CNN  November 18, 2012 8:00am-9:00am PST

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60% is up. that's up 6% from 1990 but down friday a high in 2006. thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. ly see you next week. stay tuned for reliable sources. it has been challenging to say the least for the journalists to keep up with "the david letterman show" petraeus soap opera. with him stepping down other his affair with biography paula broad well has led to a tangle. a shirtless fbi agent and another general and the media can't get enough. >> one of the officials describes the i'm as sexually explicit. >> apparently 20 to 30,000 pages of e-mails with jill kelley who
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set the fw bi on paula broad well. >> petraeus affair. >> biographer and mistress paula broadwell. >> schenn an begans. >> very explicit e-mails. >> friend employ, perhaps flirtatio flirtatious. >> is this story serious or just salacious. s that there been too much reckless speculation and has it overshadowed popp's agenda or the investigation of the investigation in ia reese role with benghazi. >> the consecutive executive steps down. can he jump-start a paper that's been through tough times? aisle ask him. a i'm howard kufrts and this is "reliable sources." it is for the media the perfect storm when the combined sex, scandal, war, spying, and gossip, not to mention an fbi investigation and secret e-mails. the coverage of the petraeus
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scandal has been relentless, sometimes breathless, a tabloid tale in which the facts are often murky. >> the extramarital affair, we're told, was with one paula broadwell. >> the fbi opened an investigation into whether broadwell had access to petraeus years e-mails or other access. >> jill kelley is apparently the woman who is apparently being called the other woman. the fbi began investigating ha racing e-mails sent anonymous employ to another woman jill kellie. >> petraeus has told friends he had no romantic involvement with kelly. marine has been exchanging e-mails with the woman at the center of the petraeus affair. >> what is it about david pe trags and paula broadwell that continues to mesmerize them nine days after the story broke. >> joining us now, tara mckelvey. and here in washington, rajiv
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chandrasekaran, senior correspondent and editor for "the washington post." rajiv, you've covered the war in afghanistan extensively. did you get invited on trips with david petraeus, how well did you know him and how well -- >> i covered him off and on first back in iraq when he was a division commander up in northern iraq and more recently when he was top commander of all u.s. and nato forces in afghanistan and in that later job i did travel around the country with him. he would give remarkable access to journalists. oftentimes it was under very strict ground rules that things were off the record but he did open himself up to press coverage because he thought it was important for the mission to get recognized out there, but also i believe because he also liked to see himself at the center of the coverage. >> so that remarkable access paid dividends for petraeus's image. would you say, would you argue with the notion that many of the jurmts who dealt with him, who know him, have tended to go easy
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on him on this unfortunate scandal? >> i think some have. others have been a little harder edged and fairer, but, look. that access could be intoxicating. you were in that exclusive bubble. he would bring you in to meetings he would have with subordinate commanders, at times even into sessions that involved secret material that you were told you couldn't right about. you get to zip around the battlefield on black hawk helicopters. it's a thrill traveling with a four-star, and for the journalists who got to be in there, wit as sense you were getting to see an aspect of our modern wars that your colleagues or competitors weren't otherwise able to see. it was, you know, a revealing remarkable glimpse, and so, sure, that built friendships. it wasn't just that. petraeus was an assiduous i'mer.
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e-mailer, howard. >> i heard that. >> i would joke he would respond faster than my wife would. if you had a question about something certainly on a story that had something to do with him, he'd get back really quickly, often times with a couple of paragraphs. he would generally have a few clear ground rules on how to use it but at one point it propertied a thought in my head, boy, don't you have a war to run here? >> tara, you write in the atlantic that petraeus was at the center of a medial charm campai campaign. explain. >> he was really good at it azra jeev was saying. pe trail spent a lot of time with the journalists and pulled them into his world and he was fun to be around. i met him at a party and he was a lot of fun to talk to and i can see how intoxicating it would be. >> you also say, tara, in that article that petraeus was a flirt. >> yeah. he was a total flirt, both with
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men and with women and people respond to it. they like to be flattered, and he was good at it. >> rah geofjivrajiv, in a piecen a piece he had to resign as cia director and he became famous as a general and commander that he had fallen. >> oh, indeed. both sides in some way are culpable here. both sides are responsible for building him up. yes, petraeus grasped before many of his fellow generals, the power of the media narrative in shaping the modern battlefield story and he reached out to journalists, to authors, and not to think tank experts and others bringing him to iraq and afghanistan to observe what was going on. he under thstood that the stori of the wars would not be shaped
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just on the ground but also in washington. what he did there was sort of -- it's now sort of become ceched wisdom within the military but back in the early day of iraq, it was sort of pioneering. >> there was a distance between the people running the war and the journalists who were covering the war. tara mckelvey, you have an acquaintan acquaintanceship with paula broadwell? she was over tour kwlo your hou? >> at the time, i read. and she and i talked about petraeus. and paula, she sort of talked about him in a way that made he wonder about their relationship. it wasn't the way i talked about my sources. >> did you think that she was being indiscreet. >> it's not that she told me anything or anybody else at the party of what they were doing but there was some kind of hint
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theres with a relationship that doesn't exist and i kind of wondered what was going on. >> in the avalanche of coverage over the last nine or so days where certainly some journalists are portraying petraeus as kind of a heroic but flawed figure, do you think that plau broadwell has been depicked unfairly and many people blaming her for what happened? >> savage. the coverage of paula has been savage. they've been questioning her entire professional ka reerk looking back, trying to de-seth it, trying to determine if she was really qualified to be doing the kinds of things she's been doing. >> and the coverage as well very personal, rajiv, in terms of the focus on her attire and that sort of thing, kind of painting her as if she drew david petraeus into this relationship against his will, and i guess i would say it takes two to tangle. >> it certainly does. and some of that coverage as tara has been saying is beyond the paechlt but some of it was
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relevant. you know, i'd assert that what she was wear wheng she was going off to tlaurt operating bases or in kabul in the capital of a muslim country, there was a suggestion that perhaps she was dressing inappropriately. i think that was important. it attracted the attention of general petraeus who at one point told an aide to get her to dress down. with regard to her past, look, she holds herself up as a scholar, as a biographebiograph national security expert. so it is only relevant to look back and say what are your bona fide s and credentials. they've been going back and looking at paula's past is a vel rant thing to do particularly in light of a book she produced, a book of -- a product of remarkable access to general petraeus was laudatory. it's been described as haig owe
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graphic. it didn't include much criticism at all or counterpoints of view with regard to afghanistan and his leadership of the war. having covered that war, i can say without much equivocation that there were aspects of his leadership of the strategy that he was leading over there that were controversial, that there were multiple points of view and that really didn't get surfaced very profoundly in her account. >> i take it it's fair to say she admired general petraeus. you talked about washington being a place where washington was a place where classified information was used as a pickup line. what did you mean by that? >> i knew you were going to ask me about that. i can't reveal anything more than that. >> i want to make clear that we don't know part of the fog of war here, so to speak, in the coverage, whether or not any important classified information ended up on paula broadwell's
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computer but certainly that's part of the story. tara's going to be tight-lipped about that one. one thing i want to point out, the 20,000 or 30,000 pages between general allen and jill kelley. you reported that there were only a couple hundred of e-mails over the source of a few years and most were routine. i heard you say there were a lot and they were sexually charged. do you worry about being spun here and having to rely on people not the principles but people around the principles who find out what the nature of that relationship was? >> indeed. and i think maybe the truth rests somewhere in the middle of all of this. those e-mails are not bottled up at the defense department in the inspector general's office. ite goes doing take some time before that report comes out. certainly people close to general allen are trying to play this down saying not so many
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e-mails, you know. the wording of them was more innocuous than has been suggested. but for the defense secretary, leon panetta, to refer these i'ms to two inspector general investigations suggest that they saw something in them that was potentially very concerning and to delay his domination to be the top commander in europe. so it remains to be seen. >> there are some missing pieces in here. you talked about paula broad well being savage in your review. what about the tone? i guess i'm called nr for the female perspective on the female coverage. there's no question that's been particularly savage. it's also funny to hear about the e-mail, like what kos constitutes flirtatious e-mail and so on. i saw something in "the new york times" where they described ball la as mr. petraeus's lover. its like it's something that "the new york times" has to sort out, 000 deal with the sex scandal.
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the tone is very strange. >> a lot of us have to sort out the brief observations? >> both with broadwell andley t. paula had a broad concern for military and veteran issues and with jill kelley, i think she really did care about the wounded families and fair children. >> i'm glad you pointed that out. coming up, is the saturation of the two generals and the two women a rut shot? we'll look at the questions in a moment. but i'm still "stubbed" up. [ male announcer ] truth is, nyquil doesn't unstuff your nose. what? [ male announcer ] it doesn't have a decongestant. no way. [ male announcer ] sorry. alka-seltzer plus fights your worst cold symptoms plus has a fast acting decongestant to relieve your stuffy nose. [ sighs ] thanks! [ male announcer ] you're welcome. that's the cold truth! [ male announcer ] alka-seltzer plus. ♪ oh what a relief it is! ♪ [ male announcer ] to learn more about the cold truth
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it's been head spinning that has sometimes gotten out ahead of what's been confirmed. were there 30,000 e-mails between general allen and jill kelley? did paula broadwell threaten her or not? all of this prime fodder, of
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course, fror "the daily show." >> just a second. >> just the e-mails were flirtatious from senior defense issue. >> jennifer working with her producer there. >> this just in that a senior u.s. defense official does tell us that the e-mails with jill kelley between general allen and jill kellie were flirtatious in nature. >> further complicating the case, officials say the fbi agent who first launched the investigation, a friend of kelley's is now the subject of himself a probe for suspected inappropriate behavior including sending kelli shirtless photos of himself. >> so is the coverage out of control? joining us here in washington, amy holmes, anchor of "real news" on the blaze.
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terence smith and margaret. terry, what do you make of all the pressing accounts. the number, were they linked to paula broadwell? is it good journalism? >> it's obsession is what it is. it's hollywood on the potomac. hollywood loves a sex scandal. and you notice the way there was an election. are you aware of that? it dropped out of the headlines, out of the news. fiscal news, boring, difficult, numbers no good. so what i was struck by, though, was the obsessive quality of the coverage. i know of one young woman who actually interviewed petraeus at a think tank on the stage. she got a call from "the washington post" saying, did he grope you in the green room. that's fishing. that's a fish iin fishing exped
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>> have the media been much harder on plaul broadwell and jill kelley than the two generals? >> i should say so. they were the actual public serva servants, the people who were supposed to be putting their attention on running wars, not on parentally this blizzard of e-mails to a doctor's wife in tampa. >> but you were complimentary, these nutty tampa twins. >> believe me, i'm the first to say i love a good sex scandal, but only if susan rice was involved, they would get to the bottom of that. >> what we're getting are these bits and pieces, self-serving leaks from aids, and others, and they still don't know. it's a hard story to report but we haven't shown much strain either. >> there are two things that work. one is david petraeus does have
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a press codery and he now has people anorthern mussily defending him. >> or not so anonymously in the case only sof columnists. >> in the case of sum. so you have him over here. how many witnesses before congress get to come and go without a picture? i mean that's the kind of bipartisan cooperation that could help with the fiscal cliff. but the other thing about the women is that, you know, we're dealing with a party planner with diplomatic immunity, you know, who seems to have gotten all kinds of, you know, generals courting her in a certain way because she raises funds for them. but this is a largerer than life person to cover. so you go there because she's a character. >> by the way york were referring to friday when former general petraeus testified in a closed door hearing on capitol hill about the attack in libya, was not asked about the affair and there were no pictures. as you say, he was kind of escorted in and out i would argue that, yes, it's
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koj, but there's no question when the head of the cia resigns and says in his resignation that it's because of an extramarital affair, that's a big news story and legitimate news story and it does raise the questions of was any national security compromised, et cetera. so, yes, it's obsessive. >> absolutely, but -- there is. but it seems all the stories about privacy of i'm and national security and all of that is a little bit of the figure leaf for the more salacious stuff like the shirtless fbi agent. that was pretty band then we got the picture. it looks like a joke of a photo. >> it's human nature. you think of "vanity fair" and a becky sharp character. but there hasn't been the same on general allen or general petraeus as there have been on these women. >> wa do you think of the
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cascade of public service. seven tips to vn an affair, how to avoid getting caught. >> i think that's kvich. love is fleeting. e-mail is forever. we forget. we're always put our femoral thoughts down. it's like a nationwide addiction. that's interesting. and then there is the serious parter the fbi. en toless rogue agent manages to set off a series of convenients. >> and he was a friend of jill kelley who toppled this investigation. >> this is huge. and do we want the fbi to have an agent who's able to do this in a series of actions? >> and there's still questions, serious questions about the fbi procedures in this. if indeed they concluded early on that there was no national security or criminal issue here, then why didn't it stop right
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there? >> and why did director claerp -- >> why did it become public? i'd like to know. >> why didn't director james clapper at that point say there is no reason to resign. >> oh. you're saying why didn't he say that. he's the white house official who essentially pushed petraeus out. let's come back to the media coverage. sigh these stories as an attempt to keep the story alive. jill kelley visited the white house three times. once was a tour and once when she had lunch with a low level official. even things that are technically true, with they're getting blown up. true or false. >> i would say that's true but it was also to the kwoef what type of access does jill kelley have to all these high-ranking government officials and we haven't got on the the bottom of how did paula broadwell know or think she knew about the cia annex and perhaps where militia was being held there. do we take it at face value that
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she didn't hear it from general petraeus or it was completely made up? i don't know. >> what about the stakeout of paula's home. what exactly did jill kelley do? we don't know at this point that she did something terribly wrong but all of these reporters are camped out on her lawn. >> she's set off this investigation. there fees not much sim pa thitic about this woman. if you make this bed, you sleep in it. >> exactly. >> conservative pundits say the mainstream media is much more interested and being protective of president obama on the very serious fatal attack that left four americans dead. >> well, howie, there's been endless coverage of the benghazi affair and susan rice performance, what was said, what
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wasn't said. and it was largely political. it's been pushed by one party over the other. >> in order to turn it into a scandal. >> right. they want to turn a possible secretary of state nominee into this vehicle for all that stands in benghazi when in fact the same senators said nothing and were actually favorably disposed toward condi rice when she was really secretary of state and really relying on intelligence i would have thought, terry, as student of the media you'd be a lit mrl critical. you seem to be saying, let's enjoy it. >> there are excesses. i don't dispute that for a minute. but i wanted to make a point there are substance in here too, serious issues in here too, and, hay, it's hollywood on the powe toe mitt romney. >> when we get a break, mitt romney won't talk to the press but a leaked conference call puts him in an unflattering light. here we go again.
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i was in the east room when
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president obama met. nbc's chuck todd circled back to topic a. >> potentially there was a national security breach with your cia director. do you believe i you should have known sooner? >> chuck, what i'll say is it is also possible that had we been told, then you'd be sitting here asking a questioning why were you interfering in a criminal investigation. >> does the president have a point that he would have been questioned either way? >> yeah, pretty much either way, i would say. and, you know, most of our problems come from the idea that the justice department is in cahoots with every administration. that's what you have to be careful about. >> with all the media noise, to tie this up, it may be that there's no criminal wrongdoing by anyone. >> that may be. there are still questions to ask. i think there you saw the president being very clever, something he does very often, which is to play media critic.
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instead of answers the question, he turned the question around. chuck should sa say, no, we actually want an answer, not a critique of how we ask questions. >> there were questions about fiscal cliff, iran, syria, climate change. >> ben gotti. >> and benghazi. >> i thought it was all right. they covered most of the principle stories of the day or week. wi us most struck by the difference in president obama himself. this was a more confident, relaxed, even assertive president or person than we had seen before. and he staked out his position on taxes. and, then, of course, he rolled it back. >> he was impassioned in his defense of susan rice, something we rarely see from the president. >> right. so winning another four years will do that for you. let's contrast with the loser of the election. that's mitt romney. he hasn't given any interviews
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or offered any positive forward statements. instead he did a conference call with donors and people were able to listen in and romney was quoted at not directly saying that president obama gave gifts to women, gays, and free contraceptives was very popular with young women. is romney really getting beat up by the press because all he has are these comments that made him look bitter? >> well, he made them. >> like the 47%. >> yeah. it reinforces that 47%. where's waldo. he's gone completely underground. we don't know where he is or what he's doing. there's simply -- there's nothing coming out. that's all we have. >> and his running mate paul ryan did give one interview saying urban turnout was really high and that's the reason his ticket lost the election.
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i'm just wondering whether or not -- okay, they lost. they're not happy about it. but don't they have any ability to look forward as opposed to being defined by leaks. >> well, friends like these in terms of the donors who leaked, i want to get back to president obama and the press conference with president obama. let's contrast that with the press conference that was led by jan crawford where the press coordinated the questions with mitt romney with regard to the 47% comment and asked him relentlessly to explain himself and defend himself for that closed door remarket this was during the campaign. fast forward, here we are this week and we have these sort of ping-pong questions about global warming when the real question here is been ga city, libya, what have you, the petraeus scandal and susan rice, which you're now saying was at your direction when she didn't have the facts. >> president obama was asked a tough question by jonathan karl. >> did we see the coordination
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of the prs asking -- >> if there was, you would have been criticizing them. i was actually supportive of jan crawford. >> cbs correspondent jan crawford. >> absolutely. where was it. >> well, it's much harder to coordinate a presidential press conference than it is a gagel of reporters on a campaign trail. >> they may be but i think he got a pretty easy press corps that week. >> this is his philosophy, i would judge from the statements. and, you know, many people put it down as sour grapes. >> and in that same conference call, terry, later came out he talked about the primary debates and he said, well, next time they shouldn't all be done by cnn and nbc, show casing liberals beating the heck out of it. first of all there were a number of debates hosted by fox news
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and second off all, it sounds like he's blames the media for those debates. >> anybody but himself. >> and the republican party is supposed to be a party of personal responsibility and it gives us inside how romney is a process person instead of looking at greater vision and what his campaign is about. and we saw this op piece from karl rove making similar points. >> newt gingrich got a lot of attacks in those debates but by and large, they were fair. >> he won every debate. >> it actually helped him. >> let's be graceful loser here. it's such the doubt of somebody who loses that you blame the media. you know, the republican governors' meeting got a lot of coverage by the meeting that's racing off to do 2016 that's looking who among here is the candidate. they were far more critical of romney. >> at least they did it on the record. >> on the record. amy holmes, tara mckelvey, mar
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jie uk tad to sorkin. he jokingly said he might work me into the plot again. when sorkin was interviewed by my boss tina brown the subject turned naturally enough to david petraeus. sorkin said he would love to include the sex scandal in the upcoming season but alas it's not to be. >> our timeline ends the day before the petraeus story broke and i can't include it, otherwise i would have loved to. >> otherwise you would go there. >> yeah. >> what struck me is the way sorkin was struck about heroes. he's only interested in ones that are flawed like petraeus, one he desires. he wasn't sure it would work in this snarky age. sorkin's next project is a guy who certainly qualifies as a brilliant but qualified icon steve jobs. sorkin's making a film about the apple founder which he described this way. >> then tire movie -- then tire
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going to be three scenes, three scenes only all taking place in realtime. the first being the mac and the next being when he left app and the third being ipod. basically my goal is -- i don't know if you remember the ad campaign that he did. it was the "think different" campaign, here's to the crazy ones. that's how it begans. >> job was also a genius and a harsh human being. as for newsroom, if you're looking for larger-than-life figures with out-sized flaws, what better field to execute niz than the media. coming up, a shake-up at "the washington post." a new editor coming to thanh. we'll talk to marty barren next. ♪
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buyouts. everybody knows the drill. what are the tough choices? >> well, news organizations like the post are under tremendous financial pressure and we have to choose what we want to do. we have to make choices under circumstances like that, and so i'm not prepared yet to talk about what the choices will be. i want to have conversations with the people on the staff about that and with the entire organization. >> but you have said some of these will be painful choices. >> of course. there's revenues of news organizations like the post and the grobe and other news organizations like that as they decline, those will be tough choices because those revenues are declining. >> the post writes that he had disagreed with a publisher over both the size and direction of the budget cuts either resigned or was forced out. i think it's fair to say he at least got a nudge. is that a difficult environment for you to step in as a new editor? >> well, i'm not so sure it's a
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difficult environmental. i recognize that we're under pressures, i recognize that we have to make choices. i recognize that the amount of resources we have will be dependent upon the revenues that we have. and so that's true at the post as it is at err other news organization like the post. we have to do that. we have no choice. >> in the old days the editor would come in, hire a bunch of hot shots. these days given financial pressure and people questioning whether newspapers have a feature, why would anyone want this post? >> it's "the washington post" and "washington post" has play add defining and distinctive role in politics and policy and worrell affairs and think importantly in its own community. it's a superb staff and for me it's great to be a part of it. >> i worked there for years as you know. everyone says digital is the future. the post website unlike "the boston globe" and others doesn't
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charge anything. there's no pay wall. does that have to change at some point. >> that's not for me to say. that's for the people on the business side to say. i'm sure they've looked at it closely. i imagine they're continuing look at it. so far they've decided not do that but i don't what they're going to decide in the future. >> the print edition of the post which i still read every morning brings in 75% of the revenue even though everyone talks about digital and clicks online but that recovers a sizeable staff to cover it, not just the district of columbia but virginia. is it important to protect that local franchise even though it's a national news organization? >> absolutely. i mentioned it has a variety of coverage including its own community. it has to cover its own community. it's a local as well as a national paper. >> how do you keep morale up when people are seeing some of their friends leave and seeing the ambitions curtail and the
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globe used to do more national reporting than it does now. it's become more of a local paper. does that take a take a toll on staff? >> there's no question it takes a toll. people have certain expectations of what the staffing will be. we have to face the reality of the business environment. morale is held up by the journalism the newsroom does. there's no question the post does extraordinary journalism day-in and day-out and will continue to do extraordinary journalism with whatever resources it has. >> at the same time, you say they can't afford to do everything, a plight not similar to that of many news organizations, so you have to pick some priorities here? >> i'm sure i will have to pick priorities. i think people do that in every business, every enterprise. they have to do that in news organizations as well. i am not prepared at the moment to say what the priorities should be. >> sounds unremarkable when you say it is a business, have to have a balance of expenditures. but there's a great role of the
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newspapers, the work we do that somehow somebody else will take care of the financial problems. now it is the editor's job to worry about the business side. you spend a lot of time on that i am sure in boston. >> sure. i believe in the romance. i see the romance of the business. that's why i'm still in this profession and i think what we do is extraordinarily important but it is also a business, and certainly editors are having to get much more involved in business affairs than they did at one time. maybe i wish that weren't so, but it is so, and i have to deal with it like every other editor in the country. >> this is the profession we have chosen. 20 seconds. was it a hard decision to personally leave the boston globe? >> i love my colleagues at the globe, they have done extraordinary work in the decade plus i have been there, but "the washington post" has played an extraordinary role in this country and in american journalism, so ultimately it was not a hard decision to make. >> good luck at your new home. marty bar en, glad you were in town.
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appreciate you stopping by to talk. >> thank you very much. still to come, nancy pelosi pushes back hard against a reporter's question. a white house correspondent tries to push the president into overtime, and the tv chef that cried foul over an unappetizing review. the media monitor is straight ahead. oni & cheese without freshly-made pasta. you could also cut corners by making it without 100% real cheddar cheese. but then...it wouldn't be stouffer's mac & cheese. just one of over 70 satisfying recipes for one from stouffer's. [ gordon ] for some this line is a convenience. how you doing today? i'm good thanks. how are you? i'm good. [ gordon ] but for others, it's all they can afford. every day nearly nine million older americans don't have enough to eat. anything else? no, not today. join me, aarp, and aarp foundation in the drive to end hunger by visiting drivetoendhunger.org.
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time now for the media monitor, our weekly look at the hits and errors in the news business. rupert murdoch likes to stir up, but last night he went beyond outrageous to offensive. he defended air strikes against gaza a in response to a series of rocket attacks. he is strongly pro-israel doesn't like some of the coverage. he tweeted with israel's position precarious, the ap and. it is impossible to evaluate the charge because the characters had no specifics. then came this tweet. why is jewish owned press so consistently anti-israel in every crisis? that is appalling. the coverage tilts against
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israel is fair game for the debate, but jewish owned press? who is he talking about, other than perhaps the salazar burger family at that owns the times, most are owned by comcast, viac viacom, disney, time warner. beyond that, he isn't shy about interfering in his own news rooms suggests that jewish americans have a hidden agenda in which their religion trumps their commitment to journalism. that's atrocious and beneath rupert murdoch. it is now clear luke russert has some of his brass. when nancy pelosi said she was staying on as minority leader, he asked a question related to her age and she didn't like it one bit. >> some of your colleagues privately say your decision to stay on prohibits the party from having a younger leadership and will be hurt the party long term. what's your response. >> you always ask that question,
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except to mitch mcconnell. i think what you will see, and let's for a moment honor it as a legitimate question, although it's quite offensive. >> i'm sorry, congresswoman, it was a legitimate question and russert asked it respectfully. speaking of questions, president obama was wrapping up his white house news conference when bloomberg tried to send it into overtime. >> thank you very much. >> most of the conversations -- >> that was a great question, but it would be a horrible precedent for me to answer your question just because you yelled it out. so thank you very much, guys. >> nice try, but obama had taken questions for more than 40 minutes. just won another four years, you get to set the rules, even with the most persistent reporters.
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he took a meat cleaver to guy fee era. he writes were you struck by how very far from awesome the awesome pretzel tenders are? and why did the toasted marshmallow taste like fish? fieri fought back on "the "today" show." >> what was your reaction when you read this review, it must have felt like a punch in the gut. >> punch in the gut, i thought it was ridiculous. i've read reviews, there's good and bad in the restaurant business, but that to me went so overboard, it seemed like there was another agenda. >> well, the review was pretty vicious, no question about it, but newspapers have a right to do that, and sometimes restaurant owners, even famous ones, have to swallow it. that's it for this edition of "reliable sources." i am howard kurtz. if you miss a